Wild geese fly over a field at the Oderbruch near Wriezen, eastern Germany. The Oderbruch, a region with wide fields in proximity to the Oder River, is a popular resting place for migratory birds on their way to wintering areas of the south

A butterfly sucks nectar from a flower at the Dachigam national park, outside Srinagar City, the summer capital of Indian Kashmir. The wildlife sanctuary is home to some of the most exotic and endangered wildlife in north India

A finless porpoise – known as the 'river pig' by locals – in captivity at the Research Centre for Aquatic Biodiversity and Resource Conservation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Wuhan, central China's Hubei province. Chinese scientists have begun a survey of the dwindling population of an endangered porpoise the Yangtze River, China's longest waterway at more than 6,000km, as the animal edges towards extinction due to man-made threats

An adult male amur falcon hangs helplessly in a hunter's net, on the banks of Doyang reservoir in Wokha, Nagaland. Each October, tens of thousands of amur falcons migrate through the region in India where they are mercilessly targeted by hunters who kill more than 15,000 of these raptors every day for local consumption and for sale in markets

Jonathan Harding, field manager for the Forestry Commission, views a young ash tree in woodland near Canterbury, Kent, which shows wilting leaves, a symptom of the deadly plant pathogen fungus Chalara fraxinea dieback

A cormorant standing on a branch. The bird was spotted cruising for food on a river in Cheshire by the wildlife photographer Ben Hall. Swimming along on the surface of the water, it quickly dived below after spotting a tasty treat swimming by - propelling itself using its feet. Some cormorant species have been found to dive to depths of as much as 45 metres

Female walruses and their young haul themselves out of the water to rest between foraging bouts in the eastern Chukchi Sea, US. Sparse summer sea ice in the Arctic over the past five years has caused behavioral changes in Pacific walruses, according to research published by US Geological Survey

An illegal transhipment taking place on board the Chinese ship Heng Xing 1 in an area of international waters near the exclusive economic zone of Indonesia. The mainland Chinese-owned vessel, Hong Kong-registered and Cambodian-flagged, was caught illegally transhipping frozen tuna from a Philippine fishing vessel and two other Indonesian vessels in the Pacific high seas, where none of the ships have licences to operate. Greenpeace activists boarded the ship and found the hold to be full of skipjack tuna and juvenile yellowfin, which is classified on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list as near threatened

Giant pandas could be left hungry and struggling to survive by global warming, scientists have warned. A new study predicts that climate change is set to wipe out much of the bamboo on which the bears rely for food

One of two bears that mauled and killed their keeper, Benjamin Cloutier. The Montana wildlife company where the accident occurred has been barred until further notice from taking animals off-site because of public safety concerns, state officials said

A one-month old baby pudu deer grazes in an artificial environment at a university in Concepción City, south of Santiago. The pudu, the world's smallest deer, was found orphaned in a forest and inhabits exclusively in southern Chile and part of Argentina. The species is currently in danger of extinction

One of the 35 three-toed sloths (Bradypus tridactylus) rescued by Green Heritage Fund Suriname (GHFS), crawls away after being released into the jungle in District Saramacca. Suriname's game law prohibits the hunting of sloths as well as the keeping of them as pets, and in one week GHFS rescued 105 animals including sloths, ant-eaters and porcupines

Springboks in the Central Kalahari game reserve, Botswana. The president of Botswana recently announced that no further hunting licences would be issued from 2013, and that all hunting in Botswana would be impossible by 2014

Orangutans feed on bananas in Tanjung Puting national park, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. Tanjung Puting national park is the first orangutan rehabilitation centre in Indonesia. Members of the Great Apes Survival Partnership last week finalised a long-term plan to protect great apes and their habitat

A lobo-guara, also known as a maned wolf, walks in the Jardim zoo in Brazil. Brazilian researchers are turning to cloning to help fight the perilous decline of several animal species. The scientists at Brazil's Embrapa agriculture research agency said this week they have spent two years building a gene library with hundreds of samples from eight native species, including the collared anteater, the bush dog, the black lion tamarin, the coati, and deer and bison varieties, as well as the onca pintada jaguar and the maned wolf

The world's population of mountain gorillas has increased by more than 10% in two years, new census figures show. A survey carried out in Uganda's Bwindi Impenetrable national park and released by the Ugandan Wildlife Authority has found that numbers of the critically endangered species, Gorilla beringei beringei, have risen from an estimated 786 in 2010 to 880 – largely due to conservation efforts

Two Old Birds Sat On A Park Bench, by 15-year-old Katie Alston, from Maidstone, Kent, shows two herring gulls peering into the camera. It is one of 31 photos shortlisted for the RSPCA young photographer of the year. The winner is to be announced on 14 December

(Top) On October 27 2012, Nick Brandt took this photo of Qumquat, one of Amboseli national park’s most famous matriarchs, and her family, in Kenya. (Bottom) 24 hours later, they were gunned down by poachers